Photos: The 12 coolest libraries in the world

Two recent studies have confirmed what we all knew anyway: Reading is good for you. Surely there's no better place to read a book than at one of these 12 coolest libraries in the world.'
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1. The Abbey library of Saint Gall, in St. Gallen, Switzerland, is recognized as one of the richest medieval libraries in the world.'
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1. As of 2005, the library consists of more than 160,000 books, of which 2,100 are handwritten. Nearly half of the handwritten books are from the Middle Ages and 400 are over 1,000 years old.Courtesy
/ howdyheidi.com

2. The Library of Trinity College is the largest research library in Ireland. The Dublin library contains about five million books, including 30,000 current serials and significant collections of manuscripts, maps and printed music.Courtesy
/ fatherdadman.wordpress.com

2. The Old Library is one of Ireland's biggest tourist attractions, and holds thousands of rare, and in many cases very early, volumes.Courtesy
/ www.tcd.ie

3. However, Strahov Monastery's Theological Hall library, which was completed in 1679, remains open today after a costly restoration in the 1990s.Courtesy
/ www.magx.com

4. Jay Walker is an American inventor and entrepreneur who's likely best known as the founder of Priceline.com. His private Walker Library of the History of Human Imagination is a 3,600-square-foot private facility located at his home in Ridgefield, Connecticut.'
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4. Jay Walker's private library, which is not open to the public, contains more than 50,000 volumes including thousands of landmark books and museum-level artifacts. The architecture is a multi-level, maze-like setting.Courtesy
/ wired.com

5. The Seattle Public Library's Central Library is the flagship library of the Seattle Public Library system. The 11-storey glass and steel building in downtown Seattle was built in 2004.Courtesy
/ ayeshanaveed.wordpress.com

5. The 362,987-square-foot library, which can hold about 1.45 million books, has a unique, striking appearance consisting of several discrete 'floating platforms' seemingly wrapped in a large steel net around a glass skin.Courtesy
/ www.curvirostra.com

6. Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, built in 1963, is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts.Courtesy
/ www.amis.org

6. The library is located at the centre of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The public exhibition hall surrounding the glass stack tower displays contains, among other things, one of the 48 extant copies of the Gutenberg Bible.Courtesy
/ ifuni.com

7. The Geisel Library is the main library building at the University of California, San Diego. The library tower rises eight storeys to a height of 33.5 metres.Courtesy
/ www.photography-discussions.info

7. The Geisel Library is named in honour of Audrey and Theodor Seuss Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss), who were generous contributors and long-time residents of La Jolla, where UC San Diego is located.Courtesy
/ alanis.simmons.edu

8. The British Museum Reading Room was the main reading room of the British Library until 1997. There is a new British Library now, but the Reading Room remains in its original form inside the new British Museum. It was opened to the public in 2000.Courtesy
/ en.wikipedia.org

8. A panorama of the interior of the Reading Room. Its domed roof is metal framed in segments and the surface that makes up the ceiling is a type of papier-mache.Courtesy
/ en.wikipedia.org

9. The Vancouver Public Library's central branch is a nine-story rectangular box within Library Square containing book stacks and services. It is surrounded by a free-standing, elliptical, colonnaded wall featuring reading and study areas that are accessed by bridges spanning skylit light wells.Courtesy
/ en.wikipedia.org

10. The Salt Lake City Public Library's main branch, which opened in 2003, is a five-storey-tall, 240,000-square-foot building designed by Moshe Safdie, the same architect behind Vancouver Public Library's main branch.Courtesy
/ Pedro Szekely

10. Most of the light in the Salt Lake City Public Library, which has a collection of more than 500,000 books, comes from the feature five-storey glass wall and skylight.Courtesy
/ en.wikipedia.org

11. The Delft University of Technology, also known as TU Delft, is located in Delft, Netherlands. The TU Delft Library was built in 1997.Courtesy
/ travel.spotcoolstuff.com

11. The roof of the TU Delft Library is covered with grass, which serves as a natural insulation. The library is topped by the steel cone that gives the structure its unique shape.Courtesy
/ travel.spotcoolstuff.com

12. The José Vasconcelos Library in Mexico is dedicated to José Vasconcelos, the former philosopher, presidential candidate and president of the National Library of Mexico.Courtesy
/ en.wikipedia.org

12. The library is spread on 409,000 square feet and is located in downtown Mexico City. It opened in 2006.Courtesy
/ speakenglishsalon.wordpress.com

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Two recent studies have confirmed what we all knew anyway: Reading is good for you.

First, a University of Sussex study found that reading is the No. 1 way to relax. Then in February, a new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that even re-reading books can be good for you.

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